The Economy and Living Standards

Debate between Debbie Abrahams and Jack Dromey

Thursday 12th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

“What planet does the Chancellor live on?”, said the Stockland Green mother. “Does he begin to understand people like me? My husband has been made redundant three times, and each time the new job is on a lower rate of pay. Do they know, up there, what life is like for us down here?”

That goes to the heart of what the shadow Chancellor said earlier about an era of discontent and disconnection. There is discontent because life is hard for most of my constituents. Living standards are squeezed and people are worried about their kids and concerned about vested interests—energy companies, for example—taking advantage of them. They say to me time and again, “Jack, it just ain’t fair.” The disconnection is because there is mistrust of politics and politicians, and incredulity when people are told that recovery is under way. Time and again I hear, “Recovery—what recovery?” My constituents say to me that this Government simply do not understand their lives, because for too many of them, life is hard and there is insecurity in the world of work. I meet constituents on zero-hours contracts and those in the building industry who complain about being undercut. One said, “Jack, they are exploiting the migrants and undercutting us.”

[Debbie Abrahams]

Is not the increase in the number of people on zero-hours contracts an absolute shame? The Chancellor was not even able to provide a figure for that number.

Private Rented Sector

Debate between Debbie Abrahams and Jack Dromey

Wednesday 23rd January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jack Dromey]

My hon. Friend is to be commended on her initiative. On a wider scale, Which? undertook that same kind of mystery shopping initiative, and it demonstrated an enormous variation in charges. For example, the charges for checking a reference vary between £10 and £275. As I will argue later, the opaqueness and the scale of the fees charged is wrong, and that must change.

We need a sector where 1 million families with children have the certainty that the rent will not rise at any time and that their children will not be forced to move school. We need a sector where there is no place for rogues who prey on vulnerable tenants and where every home is a decent home.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

There are many areas in my constituency where I am afraid that private rented housing is not fit. A recent poll by The Guardian suggested that 84% of people wanted landlords to be required to make rented homes decent. How can we ensure that the right of people to live in decent homes with secure, value-for-money tenancies does not risk landlords exiting the market?

[Jack Dromey]

I will come to that precise point later.

The sad facts are these: 37% of homes in the private rented sector do not meet decent homes standards, and we have a business model that does not work for tenants or for landlords. In no way do we want to promote flight from the private rented sector; on the contrary, we want to transform the private rented sector so that we move in future to a sector of choice that works for landlords and for tenants.